Decades after the last sailors with the Portuguese White Fleet bade St. John’s a final good bye, their memory remains.

Members of the Portuguese Navy were in the capital city Friday to remember fellow sailors who perished while fishing off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. Among those who turned out were ordinary citizens who remember well the impact and influence of the Portuguese fishermen.

Retired nurses, Helen Lawlor and two of her friends, Teresa Collins and Evangeline Drudge, attended a commemoration service at the Basilica of St. John the Baptist on Friday.

The three women worked at St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital in the 1960s.

They recounted an incident where they ended up caring for sailors injured during a fire on board one of the Portuguese vessels docked in St. John’s Harbour back in 1964.

Collins and Drudge say they spent many weeks looking after the injured men, and they left an impression.

Lawlor says the men didn’t know English and she didn’t know any Portuguese, so she took it upon herself to learn some of the language. She still has the papers with her notes, and the words she needed to help her communicate with the men.

The women indicated that in the end, the men were more than just patients, and they became friends.